Greedy Goblin

Thursday, September 27, 2012

WoWifying EVE highsec would support low/nullsec life

There is a common sentiment among low/null players that CCP is on a quest that will finally change highsec into Space WoW: perfectly safe, therefore allows constant and unstoppable growth of wealth of players. There was a well-thought out series trying to prove that such action would eventually kill EVE Online.
Please read the linked post, it's really good. Its short version: the safer highsec is, the more player will move to it to get their ISK. Even if they have low/null alts, they can't really do anything with it as any possible targets moved to highsec too. I fully agree with the situation report: highsec is vastly overpowered and one focusing on personal character progression shall never ever leave it.

Low-null-wh already has riches like high-end minerals, deadspace and officer loot, more LP in FW, T3 materials that they can trade for highsec items or ISK. The crucial problem is that in low-null-wh you have losses, while in high you already have little, therefore the highsec guy buys materials for his Tengu once in his life while the low-null-why guy buys materials for his ship several times. So the demand for low-null-wh items in high is low, while the damand for highsec items in low-null-wh is high which greatly outperform the larger relative supply in highsec due to AFK gathering.

This is the situation already. WoWifying highsec would just make it worse as you couldn't suicide gank on huge mining op or wardec them, right? Yes, but it would make the situation only slightly worse (as highsec is already safe enough). On the other hand the shift from 99% safe to 100% safe would make a huge difference in one item front: top deadspace and officer modules. Currently only idiots fit multi-billion ISK items on anything but a titan. With no highsec ganks, purples would be a major e-peen source in highsec. By changing highsec perfectly safe, the highsec players could start gathering these items for peacocking, just like their WoW counterparts collect "l33t epixx". The prices of these items would skyrocket overnight. The point is that you can't farm them in highsec at all. Every "purple" would mean multi-billion ISK transfer from highsec to low/nullsec.

Currently the earning power is in highsec, PLEX is mostly created by low-null-wh players and traded for the ISK created by highsec ones. Highsec players play for free, subsidized by nullsec ones. With the above change the direction would turn back. The "pro" highsec players would open their wallet and get PLEX to trade for ISK to trade it for that precious purple. The result would be that an officer spawn would set you up with enough ISK to play for free and be in ships for several months. Practically the whole nullsec would play for free, subsidized by busy space-WoWers working for their "full-epic" pirate battleship. The alting direction of the time-rich would switch too. Instead of null players having highsec alts for ISK making, highsec mains peacocking in a purple Tengu would have a nullsec ratting alt busily farming for officer spawns, providing soft target to feed the PvP food chain.

The best part would be for alliances: they could set ratting bounty tax high and people would still happily rat as bounties would be a smaller part of the income compared to selling the loot. Also, currently they live on ingame-altruism: they have nothing to offer to the pilots who donate their time to the alliance efforts for nothing (the player of course can have fun doing it). With the change owning good ratting spots would be a pilot magnet and the alliances could set demands in return of letting pilots rat.

About the source of "WoWifying":

For some bug the instance pulled only the two of us in. We waited some time and then started clearing the trash. Then we pulled the boss. And 2-manned it. Seriously, this is a joke even for WoW. A hunter and a restoshaman shouldn't 2-man a 5-man instance in appropriate gear when they first see it.

For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec but don't know how, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.

Wednesday morning report: 161.3B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6+0.1 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)

12 comments:

I hooked up yesterday with a lev 88 disc priest, on my 86 hunter, played for a few hours together. Went rare hunting killed 9-10. Good exp per hour, doing insane trash pulls out in the wild. I am 87 now, opened up the vale of blossom (think dalaran for pandaland) and have started to solo farm the start trash in the lev 87 dungeon I found there. Its like utgarde keep all over again.

I think there might would be some economic effect, but not nearly as much as you believe.

I don't think highsec bears are currently deterred very much from pimping out their ships by the (tiny) threat of suicide ganking and the occasional inconvenience of a wardec, so I don't think the overall bear ship pimping would increase by that much under your plan.

@Anonymous: but pimping isn't a social pride source. You can have a purple pirate battleship hiding in some end-chain highsec system in an NPC corp and you can watch it. But you can't show it off to "friends" or it will be ganked in a second. With safe highsec these ships would be orbiting a can at Jita 4-4 undock just like they are blocking the AH entrance in Stormwind.

Correct me if I'm wrong but dont Blizzard keeps introducing new bling loot in game so the yesterday rare top set is today the common top set and the tomorrow less good top set?

If CCP creates new bling modules every expansion this might work. But since CCP does not create new bling mods(thank god) it would be just a question of months for everyone having the bling faction ship and deadspace mods being worth as T2!

There is a rule for new features in EVE. Any time you have a new idea that seems nice, you need to think how it would work in solo, in small gangs/groups and in large groups(thousands) but also in shot term and long term. And by long term I mean years not months!

@Anonymous: it's just a matter of droprate. To be specific, the droprate of the highest meta officer item. Just as WoW players replace an ilvl 999 "placeholder" for an ilvl 999 "BiS", so will SpaceWoW players replace that "crap" Tobias afterburner for that "awesome" Dacklira's. If the latter drops once in 10000 hours of farming, it will take a few decades until every Space WoW player has his full BiS Tengu.

To be entirely fair, Wise Mari is the first boss of the first dungeon in the expansion, and he's honestly not a 'real' fight - doing the dance perfectly means he does zero damage to you since he has no directly damaging attacks. He summons four large adds, one after another, which can be kited to death very easily - in fact, their horrible pathing means they often die before they get to the group.

When all four adds are killed, Wise Mari starts spinning in a (slow) circle with a big beam in front of him. As long as you don't touch the beam or the water, he doesn't do any damage to you.

Jade Temple is very quick and very easy. Stormstout Brewery is a step up, though, as weird as it is - the last boss is a multi-phase dodge-things kill-adds use-mechanics fight.

Shado-Pan Monastery is where things start getting difficult, and Mogu'Shan Palace's last boss is a real treat! The first dungeon DOES feel a lot weaker, and very easy, but it's clearly there just to ease people, especially new people, into unfamiliar settings/rotations.

It gets a lot more difficult, and I think Mogu'Shan Palace especially on heroic will be a real ball-buster for LFG.

Making High-Sec perfectly safe and wow like, is only worth it for CCP, if a large amount of new players would enter the game for that reason.

And if CCP could double the EvE Population, High-Sec would become less attractive, due to the sheer masses.

As a result of this overpopulation, people would flock to the "new frontiers" low, null, WH.So what EvE really needs, is new players. Some 10.000 people from another major website, forming the next Goons would make EvE more vibrant than any patch CCP can think of.

One thing that I wonder if people noticed in Mists, many normal mobs are now using mechanics from raid bosses on smaller scales. Ran into many mobs that use things like landmines, avoidable aoe, and splash damage in specific areas.

Even bosses are going that route. I'm surprised that you didn't catch that entirely, that the first bosses are 100% dance, easing you into bosses that become 80%/20%, then 50%/50%, then 35%/65%. They are easing DS people back into raiding that is less dance, more numbers.